What is the difference between lie and deception

However, for this instance, let us turn to the Oxford English Dictionary for a definition on deception. There , deception or else the act of deceiving is defined as causing to believe something false. At a glance, this may appear quite similar to the definition of lying, but these two are not the same. Deception is making someone believe in somet hing that is false as the truth. This goes a step further from lying as it distorts the truth by verbal or non-verbal actions. Lying is also a form of deception through words, but it is not the only way.

Deception can take many forms such as concealment, propaganda , distractions, etc. For example, physically concealing something from someone can also be a form of deception. Deception is not always intentional. Sometimes a person can be self-deceived due to the reception of wrong information such as in the case of rumours. This definition does not specify the addressee, however.

It may be restated as follows:. L1 is the traditional definition of lying. According to L1, there are at least four necessary conditions for lying. First, lying requires that a person make a statement statement condition. Second, lying requires that the person believe the statement to be false; that is, lying requires that the statement be untruthful untruthfulness condition. Third, lying requires that the untruthful statement be made to another person addressee condition.

Fourth, lying requires that the person intend that that other person believe the untruthful statement to be true intention to deceive the addressee condition. These four necessary conditions need to be explained before objections to L1 can be entertained and alternative definitions can be considered. According to the statement condition, lying requires that a person make a statement. Making a statement requires the use of conventional signs, or symbols.

Grotius , ; Pierce ; Grice Making a statement, therefore, requires the use of language. It is possible for a person to make a statement using American Sign Language, smoke signals, Morse code, semaphore flags, and so forth, as well as by making specific bodily gestures whose meanings have been established by convention e.

Hence, it is possible to lie by these means. If it is granted that a person is not making a statement when he wears a wig, gives a fake smile, affects a limp, and so forth, it follows that a person cannot be lying by doing these things Siegler , If it is granted that a person is not making a statement when, for example, she wears a wedding ring when she is not married, or wears a police uniform when she is not a police officer, it follows that she cannot be lying by doing these things.

An ironic statement, or a statement made as part of a joke, or a statement made by an actor while acting, or a statement made in a novel, is still a statement. More formally, the statement condition of L1 obeys the following three constraints Stokke a, 41 :. The statement condition is to be distinguished from a different putative necessary condition for lying, namely, the condition that an assertion be made.

The assertion condition is not a necessary condition for lying, according to L1. According to the statement condition, it is not possible to lie by omitting to make a statement Mahon ; Griffiths , All lies are lies of commission.

Meza , and he was found guilty of perjury. Note that the statement condition, all by itself, does not require that the statement be made to another person, or even that it be expressed aloud or in writing. According to the untruthfulness condition, lying requires that a person make an untruthful statement, that is, make a statement that she believes to be false.

Note that this condition is to be distinguished from the putative necessary condition for lying that the statement that the person makes be false Grotius , ; Krishna , The falsity condition is not a necessary condition for lying according to L1. Statements that are truthful may be false. Statements that are untruthful may be true. As it happens, Gris is hiding in the cemetery, and the statement is true. Gris is arrested at the cemetery, and Ibbieta is released Sartre ; cf.

Siegler According to L1, Ibbieta lied to his interrogators, although the untruthful statement he made to them was true, and he did not deceive them about the whereabouts of Gris Isenberg , ; Mannison , ; Lindley, ; Kupfer , ; Faulkner If a person makes a truthful statement with the intention to deceive another person, then she is not lying, according to the untruthfulness condition.

This is what is called a palter see Schauer and Zeckhauser ; they illegitimately add that a palter must succeed in deceiving , or a false implicature Adler , or an attempt to mislead Saul b; Webber In addition to palters not being lies, a double bluff is not a lie either according to the untruthfulness condition.

Consider the following joke about two travelers on a train from Moscow reputed to be Sigmund Freud's favorite joke Cohen , :. Pavel does not lie to Trofim, since his statement to Trofim is truthful, even if he intends that Trofim be deceived by this double bluff. One implication of the untruthfulness condition is that if a person makes a statement that she believes to be neither true nor false, then she cannot be lying Siegler , ; cf.

Strawson , It is a matter of debate as to whether it is possible to lie using metaphors. Nevertheless, some argue that it is possible to lie using metaphors Adler , n. If literally false metaphorical statements can be truthful statements, according to the beliefs of the speaker, and hence, can be untruthful statements, according to the beliefs of the speaker, then the deceptive gardener is lying in this example according to L1.

According to the addressee condition, lying requires that a person make an untruthful statement to another person or, strictly speaking, to a believed other person, since one might, e. That is, lying requires that a person address another person Simpson , According to L1, it is not possible for me to lie to no one whatsoever i. For example, if Mickey and Danny both believe that the F. According to L1, it is possible to lie to a general audience.

It is possible for a person to lie by publishing an untruthful report about an event Kant , , or by making an untruthful statement on a tax return, or by sending an untruthful e-mail to everyone on a mailing list, or by making an untruthful statement in a magazine advertisement or a television commercial. In these cases, the readers, hearers, watchers, etc. According to the addressee condition, lying necessarily involves addressing someone whom you believe to be a person capable of understanding your statement and forming beliefs on that basis.

It is not possible to lie to those whom you believe to be non-persons goldfish, dogs, robots, etc. It is possible to lie to other persons via intermediaries which are not persons, however e. According to the intention to deceive the addressee condition, lying requires that a person make an untruthful statement to another person with the intention that that other person believe that untruthful statement to be true.

Making ironic statements, telling jokes, writing fiction, acting in a play, and so forth, without the intention that the addressee believe these untruthful statements to be true, is not lying Morris , If x makes an untruthful statement to y , without the intention that y believe that untruthful statement to be true, but with the intention that y believe something else to be true that x believes to be true, then x is not lying to y , according to L1.

Examples of such non-deceptive untruthful statements include polite untruths Kant , 27; Mahon , They are better considered as cases of speaking in code. Augustine , 57 , such as when a speaker makes an untruthful statement to a hearer whom he believes distrusts him, in order that the hearer will believe something that the speaker believes to be true. This is not a lie according to L1.

Such non-deceptive untruths are not to be confused with white lies , i. White lies, prosocial lies, and fibs are all intentionally deceptive, and are all lies according to L1 Green , Dynel , According to the untruthfulness condition, it is not merely the case that the person who makes the untruthful statement intends that some other person believe the untruthful statement to be true; the person intends that the addressee believe the untruthful statement to be true.

Also, according to this condition, it is not merely the case that the person intends that the addressee believe some statement to be true that the person believes to be false; the person intends that the addressee believe to be true the untruthful statement that is made to the addressee. Maximilian has, of course, attempted to deceive Alessandro. This conclusion has prompted some to revise L1 to include more than one intention to deceive. According to the untruthfulness condition, it is sufficient for lying that the person who makes the untruthful statement intends that the addressee believe the untruthful statement to be true; it is not necessary that the addressee believe the untruthful statement to be true.

That is, a lie remains a lie if it is disbelieved. The existence of an act of lying does not depend upon the production of a particular response or state in the addressee Mannison , ; Wood ; MacCormick , 9 n. Two kinds of objections have been made to L1. First, objections have been made to each necessary condition, on the basis that it is not necessary for lying.

According to these objections, L1 is too narrow. Second, objections have been made to the four necessary conditions being jointly sufficient for lying, on the basis that some further condition is necessary for lying. According to these objections, L1 is too broad. Against the statement condition of L1 it has been objected that the making of a statement is not necessary for lying.

Importantly, this entails that lying can consist of simply withholding information with the intent to deceive, without making any statement at all Ekman , 28; Scott , 4. Those who make this objection would make lying the same as intentionally deceiving Ekman , Against the untruthfulness condition of L1 it has been objected that an untruthful statement is not necessary for lying.

This objection comes in a variety of forms. There are those who argue any statement made with an intention to deceive is a lie, including a truthful statement that is made with an intention to deceive Barnes , 11; Davidson , There are also those who, relying upon a Gricean account of conversational implicature Grice , 39 , argue that someone who makes a truthful statement but who thereby conversationally implicates a believed-false statement is lying Meibauer , ; a.

Dynel , — Against the untruthfulness condition it has also been objected that it is not necessary for lying that the statement that is made is believed to be false; it is sufficient that the statement is not believed to be true , or is believed to be probably false Carson , ; , Against the addressee condition of L1 it has been objected that it is sufficient for lying that the untruthful statement is made, even if it is made to no one — not even to oneself Griffiths , It has also been objected that it is possible to lie to third parties who are not addressees.

It may even be possible to lie in the case of disclosure. According to this objection, Brubaker is lying to his NASA handlers about what he did last summer, even if they are not his addressees. Against the addressee condition it has also been objected that it is possible to lie to an animal, a robot, etc. Against the intention to deceive the addressee condition of L1 it has been objected that, even if an intention to deceive the addressee is required for lying, it is not necessary that it be an intention to deceive the addressee about the content of the untruthful statement; it may be an intention to deceive the addressee about the beliefs of the speaker abut the statement—specifically, the belief that the untruthful statement is true Chisholm and Feehan , ; Williams , 74; Reboul , ; Mahon , ; Tollefsen , There are at least two ways in which L1 could be modified in response to this objection.

L1 could therefore be modified as follows:. Against this condition it has also been argued that it is not necessary that it be an intention to deceive the addressee about either the content of the untruthful statement or about the beliefs of the speaker about the untruthful statement. It is sufficient that there is an intention to deceive about some matter—that is, it is sufficient that the speaker intend that the hearer believe to be true something that the speaker believes to be false.

Note that those who make this objection would turn lying into any deception involving untruthful statements. If this objection were combined with the objection that lying could be directed to third parties as in bogus disclosure, or disclosure , L1 could be modified, as follows:. According to this objection, concealing evidence, understood as hiding evidence or keeping evidence secret, counts as being deceptive to another person.

L1 could be modified, as follows:. Finally, against this intention to deceive the addressee condition it has been objected that no intention to deceive is required for lying Shibles , 33; Kemp and Sullivan , ; Griffiths , 31; Carson et al. If the sworn-in witness in the trial of a violent criminal goes on the record and gives untruthful testimony—in order, for example, to avoid being killed by the defendant or any of his criminal associates—without any intention that that testimony be believed to be true by any person not the jury, the judge, the lawyers, the journalists covering the trial, the people in the gallery, the readers of the newspaper reports, etc.

Such non-deceptive lies are lies according to this objection but see Lackey for the argument that these lies are intentionally deceptive, and Fallis for the argument that they are not intentionally deceptive. It has been objected that L1 is not sufficient for lying because it is also necessary that the untruthful statement be false Coleman and Kay , 28; OED , ; Moore This is the falsity condition for lying Grimaltos and Rosell forthcoming, see Other Internet Resources.

For most objectors the falsity condition supplements L1 and makes this definition of lying even narrower e. For other objectors the falsity condition is part of a different definition of lying, and makes that definition narrower Carson , ; , 17; Saul b, 6. It has been objected that L1 is not sufficient for lying because it is also necessary to intend that that other person believe that that statement is believed to be true Frankfurt , 96; Simpson , ; Faulkner , This additional condition would make L1 even narrower, since it would have the result that Maximilian is not lying to Alessandro in the example above.

Finally, it has been objected that L1 is insufficient because lying requires that an untruthful assertion be made, and not merely that an untruthful statement be made. This is the assertion condition for lying. For most objectors the assertion condition supplements L1 and makes L1 even narrower Chisholm and Feehan ; Fried ; Simpson ; Williams ; Faulkner For others the assertion condition is part of a different definition of lying, and makes that definition narrower Sorensen ; Fallis ; Stokke a.

The most important objection to L1 is that lying does not require an intention to deceive. This has led to a division amongst those writing on the definition of lying. There are two positions held by those who write on the definition of lying: Deceptionism and Non-Deceptionism Mahon The first group, Deceptionists, hold that an intention to deceive is necessary for lying.

Deceptionists may be divided further in turn into Simple Deceptionists, who hold that lying requires the making of an untruthful statement with an intention to deceive; Complex Deceptionists, who hold that lying requires the making of an untruthful assertion with the intention to deceive by means of a breach of trust or faith; and Moral Deceptionists, who hold that lying requires the making of an untruthful statement with the intention to deceive, as well as the violation of a moral right of another or the moral wronging of another.

The second group, Non-Deceptionists, hold that an intention to deceive is not necessary for lying. They see the traditional definition as both incorrect and insufficient. Non-Deceptionists may be further divided into Simple Non-Deceptionists, who hold that the making of an untruthful statement is sufficient for lying, and Complex Non-Deceptionists, who hold that a further condition, in addition to making an untruthful statement, is required for lying.

Some Complex Non-Deceptionists hold that lying requires warranting the truth of what is stated, and other Complex Non-Deceptionists hold that lying requires the making of an untruthful assertion.

Simple Deceptionists include those who defend L1 Isenberg ; Primoratz as well as those who defend the modified versions of this definition: L2 Williams , L3 Mahon , L4 Newey , and L5 Lackey For Simple Deceptionists, lying requires the making of an untruthful statement with an intention to deceive, but it does not require the making of an assertion or a breach of trust or faith.

Complex Deceptionists hold that, in addition to requiring an intention to deceive, lying requires the making of an untruthful assertion , as well as or which therefore entails a breach of trust or faith.

A lie is an untruthful assertion, that is, the speaker believes the statement that is made is not true , or is false :. In the case of a lie, the speaker is attempting to get the hearer to believe a falsehood.

Note, however, that this falsehood is not normally what the speaker is stating. Rather, the falsehood that the speaker is attempting to get the hearer to believe is that the speaker believes the statement to be true. Their complete definition of a lie may be stated as follows:. According to L6 it not possible to lie if the speaker believes that the conditions are such that the hearer is not justified in believing that the speaker is making a truthful statement.

Kant provides an example in which a thief grabs a victim by the throat and asks him where he keeps his money. Chisholm and Feehan hold that the victim is not making an assertion, and hence, is not lying, given that the victim believes that the thief is not justified in believing that the victim is being truthful Chisholm and Feehan , —; but see Strudler cf. Strudler ; , for the argument that the thief can believe that the victim is credible, even if not trustworthy, because he is motivated by the threat of violence.

A lie is an untruthful assertion. The speaker intends to cause belief in the truth of a statement that the speaker believes to be false. Hence, a lie involves an intention to deceive. The speaker also implicitly assures or promises the hearer that the statement that is made is true. David Simpson also holds that lying requires an assertion and a breach of faith. This entails that someone who lies aims to deceive in three ways.

We intend that they be deceived, about whatever matter it is, on the basis of their being deceived about our belief in this matter. We intend that they be deceived about our belief in this matter on the basis of this insincere invocation of trust.

Paul Faulkner holds that lying necessarily involves telling someone something, which necessarily involves invoking trust. It is an implication of Complex Deceptionist definitions of lying that certain cases of putative lies are not lies because no assertion is made. Consider the following case of an attempted confidence trick double bluff Newey , Sarah, with collaborator Charlie, wants to play a confidence trick on Andrew. She wants Andrew to buy shares in Cadbury.

She decides to deceive Andrew into thinking that Kraft is planning a takeover bid for Cadbury. Sarah knows that Andrew distrusts her. If she tells him that Kraft is planning a takeover bid for Cadbury, he will not believe her. If she tells him that there is no takeover bid, in an attempted double bluff, he might believe the opposite of what she says, and so be deceived.

But this simple double bluff is too risky on its own. So Sarah gets Charlie, whom Andrew trusts, to lie to him that Kraft is about to launch a takeover bid for Cadbury. She also gets Charlie to tell Andrew that she believes that it is false that Kraft is about to launch a takeover bid for Cadbury. However, she intends that he believe that she is mistaken, and that in fact Kraft is about to launch a takeover bid for Cadbury.

As a result, he will be deceived. Sarah would be merely pretending to lie to Andrew, in order to deceive him.

Another case of a putative lie that is not a lie according to Complex Deceptionist definitions of lying is a triple bluff cf. Faulkner , Most people would say that lying is always wrong, except when there's a good reason for it - which means that it's not always wrong! But even people who think lying is always wrong have a problem Consider the case where telling a lie would mean that 10 other lies would not be told.

If 10 lies are worse than 1 lie then it would seem to be a good thing to tell the first lie, but if lying is always wrong then it's wrong to tell the first lie Nobody who writes about lying nowadays can do so without acknowledging an enormous debt to this groundbreaking book: Lying: Moral choice in public and private life , by Sisela Bok, Lying is giving some information while believing it to be untrue, intending to deceive by doing so.

This definition says that what makes a lie a lie is that the liar intends to deceive or at least to mislead the person they are lying to. It says nothing about whether the information given is true or false. Some philosophers believe that lying requires a statement of some sort; they say that the liar must actually speak or write or gesture. Others stretch the definition to include doing nothing in response to a question, knowing that this will deceive the questioner.

Others include 'living a lie'; those cases where someone behaves in a way that misleads the rest of us as to their true nature. There are many reasons why people think lying is wrong; which ones resonate best with you will depend on the way you think about ethics.

Lies obviously hurt the person who is lied to most of the time , but they can also hurt the liar, and society in general. Those who tell 'good lies' don't generally suffer these consequences - although they may do so on some occasions. The philosopher Sissela Bok put forward a process for testing whether a lie could be justified. She calls it the test of publicity:. The test of publicity asks which lies, if any, would survive the appeal for justification to reasonable persons.

If we were to apply this test as a thought experiment we would bring together a panel of everyone affected by a particular lie - the liar, those lied to and everyone who might be affected by the lie. We would then put forward all our arguments for telling a particular lie and then ask that 'jury' of relevant and reasonable persons if telling this lie was justified.

This sort of test is most useful when considering what we might call 'public' lying - when an institution is considering just how much truth to tell about a project - perhaps a medical experiment, or a proposed war, or an environmental development.

One executive observed to this writer that a useful test for the justifiability of an action that he was uncertain about was to imagine what the press would write afterwards if they discovered what he had done and compared it to what he had said in advance. In most cases of personal small scale lying there is no opportunity to do anything more than consult our own conscience - but we should remember that our conscience is usually rather biased in our favour.

A good way of helping our conscience is to ask how we would feel if we were on the receiving end of the lie. It's certainly not foolproof, but it may be helpful.

Different theories of ethics approach lying in different ways. In grossly over-simplified terms, those who follow consequentialist theories are concerned with the consequences of lying and if telling a lie would lead to a better result than telling the truth, they will argue that it is good to tell the lie.

They would ask:. In contrast, a dutybased ethicist would argue that, even if lying has the better consequences, it is still morally wrong to lie. Consequentialists assess the rightness or wrongness of doing something by looking at the consequences caused by that act. So if telling a particular lie produces a better result than not telling it, then telling it would be a good thing to do. And if telling a particular lie produces a worse result than not telling it, telling it would be a bad thing to do.

This has a certain commonsense appeal, but it's also quite impractical since it requires a person to work out in advance the likely good and bad consequences of the lie they are about to tell and balance the good against the bad. This is hard to do, because:. So most Utilitarian thinkers don't apply it on a case by case basis but use the theory to come up with some general principles -- perhaps along the lines of:.

This is an example of 'rule-utilitarianism'; considering every single action separately is 'act-Utilitarianism'. These two forms of Utilitarianism could lead to different results: An act-Utilitarian might say that telling a lie in a particular case did lead to the best results for everyone involved and for society as a whole, while a rule-Utilitarian might argue that since lying made society a less happy place, it was wrong to tell lies, even in this particular case.

Deontologists base their moral thinking on general universal laws, and not on the results of particular acts. The word comes from from the Greek word deon , meaning duty. An act is therefore either a right or a wrong act, regardless of whether it produces good or bad consequences. Deontologists don't always agree on how we arrive at 'moral laws', or on what such laws are, but one generally accepted moral law is 'do not tell lies'.

Most of us would accept that an unbreakable rule against lying would be unworkable, but a more sophisticated rule perhaps one with a list of exceptions might be something we could live with. Virtue ethics looks at what good virtuous people do. If honesty is a virtue in the particular system involved, then lying is a bad thing.

The difficulty with this approach comes when a virtuous person tells a lie as a result of another virtue compassion perhaps. The solution might be to consider what an ideal person would have done in the particular circumstances.

Some philosophers, most famously the German Immanuel Kant , believed that that lying was always wrong. He based this on his general principle that we should treat each human being as an end in itself, and never as a mere means. Lying to someone is not treating them as an end in themselves, but merely as a means for the liar to get what they want.

Kant also taught 'Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation.